by Marc Scott
Manning shook his head and tapped the folder with his pen. ‘No! No! It definitely says that you had to attend.’ Poppy remained silent, she was good at doing that. She had told her lie, she thought that would buy her some more time, but it didn’t, Manning was still on the warpath. ‘Do you remember the first time you lost control of your temper, Poppy, do you remember the first time you lashed out at someone?’
Time seemed to have come to a standstill. ‘I don’t remember,’ Poppy said, willing the big hand on the clock to move faster. ‘I really don’t remember.’
But that was another lie, another untruth that she had used to avoid reliving her past. Poppy did remember, she remembered everything, torrid times in her life she had chosen to lock away in her troubled mind. She was nine years old, she had been in care for over a year. Her father had stopped coming to see her by then. She had argued with a foster family that she had been living with and had been moved to the Bluebridge children’s home in Crowborough. The first few weeks were hard. Nobody spoke to her, nobody seemed to like her. The staff there were very strict, they would punish her severely if she misbehaved. In the modern day and age, the thought that children could still be physically beaten to teach them manners is almost unthinkable, but at Bluebridge it was commonplace. She was smacked soundly on her backside for her insolence by two different carers during those first few weeks at the home. She soon learned to keep her thoughts to herself. None of the children seemed to ever be visited by their family at that place, so the staff could get away with almost anything. If there was no one for the children to tell, the care workers felt safe dishing out punishments and putting their hands and other parts of their bodies in places that they shouldn’t. In her first month at the residential home, Poppy was touched inappropriately on more than one occasion by Mr Donovan. He was a lanky man with a lop-sided moustache, he had crooked teeth and always smelled of alcohol. One of the older girls had told Poppy that he was ‘sick in the head’ and that he had forced her to give him oral sex. When Poppy reported his behaviour to the manager of the home she was called a liar. They said that she was simply an attention seeker. He was never even questioned about her allegations.
She felt very scared and alone at Bluebridge, but Mr Donovan was the least of her problems. The staff there were very strict with all the children, all the children that is, except for the Baxter brothers. The evil siblings could get away with anything. Lewis Baxter was thirteen years old and had a scar on his forehead and wild demon-like eyes. His brother Callum was two years younger. He seemed to be the one with the more vicious streak. They bullied everyone, stealing any treats kids had earned and implementing a non-stop campaign of intimidation and violence. Many of the staff seemed to be afraid of the duo and chose to pass off their behaviour as ‘just kids being kids’ rather than confront them.
During her early days at Bluebridge, Poppy had been mostly left alone. The odd punch and kick here and there and the brothers spitting in her dinner was just something she had to accept. But as time went on their campaign of violence towards her began to escalate. In the space of one week the brothers had burned her legs with a lighter, placed dog excrement on her pillow and covered her hair with eggs and flour. They laughed when she cried and hit her when she threatened to report them to the staff. She hoped that they would get bored of terrorising a young defenceless girl and that they might move their attention to other residents at the home, but she was wrong. Poppy will always remember that warm summer day. Most of the staff and other children were in the back garden. She didn’t want to go outside, but surely would have done had she known what the brothers had planned for her. First, they grabbed and covered her mouth to stop her screaming, they then dragged her into the utility room behind the kitchen area and forced her into a tiny cupboard where the pots and pans were usually kept. The cupboard was so small they had to bend her knees to get her all the way in. Poppy kicked out and screamed as if she was in fear of her life. The brothers laughed loudly as they shut the door closed behind her and pushed a heavy table in front of it to make sure she could not get out. Inside the coffin-like cupboard she could hardly move at all. She shouted and screamed and cried out for help, but no one came. Surrounded by the eerie darkness, her tiny frame began to ache as she tried to stretch her legs. In her panic-stricken state she struggled to catch her breath, she wet herself and was sick down the front of her top. At some point she stopped struggling and her screams were replaced with a mellow sobbing. In Poppy’s mind, she thought that this was it, this was where her misery would finally end, that this was where she would die.
It was over two hours before the staff came back into the house and moved the table away to release her from her prison. She expected sympathy for her plight and retribution for the brothers on her release, but instead she received a scolding from the head care worker, Mrs Keane, for playing dangerous games. Poppy wiped away the traces of her tears and headed for her room. She made no mention of who the culprits were, she knew that there was no point. But something happened to Poppy Jarvis in that cupboard that day. A twisted bitterness took over both her body and her mind, a bitterness that would stay with her for the rest of her life. Her abuse from the vile siblings continued for a few more weeks. She suffered in silence, almost accepting her beatings as part of her daily life.
It was a week or two before Christmas and the home had recently lost several of its long-term residents to foster homes. Lewis Baxter was next on the list, and suddenly, out of the blue, he had been bundled into the back of a caseworker’s car and carried off for a one-week trial stay with a family in Kent. His brother was furious that they had been separated, letting everyone know that others would suffer until he returned. Poppy was always an easy target for him and while she was sitting on her bed he caught her from behind, wrapping his hands around her neck as if to strangle her. He may have only been playing, but he left her with red marks around her neck and a cut on the side of her face. But Poppy said nothing. In her head, she knew that it was time, time to bring a stop to her torment. He was alone now, there was no big brother to protect him.
In the early hours of the following morning, Poppy crept downstairs and made her way into the kitchen. As quietly as she could, she opened the drawers to find the weapon of choice, a fork, a simple dinner fork. She ran her fingers across the edges of each of them until she was happy she had secured the sharpest one. She slowly made her way back upstairs and into where Callum lay sleeping. The other bed in the room, his brother’s, was empty. She remembered clearly how the beam from the lamppost light outside seemed to be guiding a path to him across the floor, leading her directly to her target. She watched the unsuspecting bully for a few seconds, wrapped up tightly under his bedsheets and heavy duvet cover. He looked peaceful, no doubt dreaming of some more sick and twisted ways to torment her and the others at Bluebridge. All at once Poppy raised her arm and brought the fork down with an almighty force, the object splintering his skin as it cut deep into his cheek. Callum moved sharply and let out a cry of pain, but Poppy had not finished, her arm went up again and brought the makeshift weapon crashing down. This time it pierced his face much deeper and shots of blood flew up into the air. His moans had now become screams as he struggled to free himself from the covers, but a third blow was already on its way, this one barely missing his left eye and gouging a much deeper gash into the softer skin on his face. There was blood everywhere now, his pillow turned into a sea of soaking claret. As Callum struggled to free himself from the bedclothes, the fork cut him for the fourth time, this time piercing the side of his nose. Suddenly the bedroom light went on, a startled Mrs Keane rushing in to see what all the commotion was. She entered just in time to see the bloody object in Poppy’s hand raised again. She screamed out loudly, ‘No, Poppy, no!’ But her shouts went unnoticed as Poppy swung her arm downwards, this time catching the side of Callum’s neck. Luckily for the panic-stricken boy, the blow missed his jugular artery.
By now mos
t of the staff were on the scene of this bloody carnage, Mr Donovan grabbing Poppy’s arm and forcing the object of destruction from her grasp. There was screaming, there was shouting, there was blood everywhere, it was pandemonium. As one of the staff rushed to Callum’s aid with some towels to help stop the bleeding, it happened, that moment of realism. Poppy stood there, in complete silence, looking at the mayhem she had caused. But there was something strange. She felt nothing inside, she simply felt numb. Poppy was not worried about retribution, either from the staff or Lewis Baxter. She felt no sympathy for the boy whose face would now be disfigured for life, she simply felt nothing at all.
Poppy was removed from Bluebridge a few days after the incident and relocated to a rundown children’s home on the Sussex coast. The staff at her previous home had apparently ‘hushed up’ the incident in a bid to protect the ailing reputation it already had. Apart from the severe telling-off and some brutal manhandling, Poppy received no punishment at all. In her mind she wondered if this was because the staff there may have thought that the brothers might have needed bringing down a peg or two, and that this was some sort of rough justice. Some years later, a former resident at Bluebridge told Poppy that the brothers were sent to foster homes at opposite ends of the country. They believed that Lewis ended up serving a ten-year prison sentence at a maximum-security prison in Yorkshire and that his younger brother had turned his life around and was now serving in the armed forces.
Despite there being no retribution for her act of violence, the stigma followed Poppy around for years to come. She was moved five times before the following Christmas – two children’s residential homes and three foster families. It seemed that nobody wanted to keep this ‘damaged’ child in their presence for long. Her constant disobedience and violent outbursts certainly did nothing to help her cause.
* * *
‘I don’t really remember, Mr Manning, I mean Joe,’ Poppy said. ‘I really don’t remember.’
The probation officer wiped his glasses again and began to scribble some more notes in her folder. This always irritated Poppy. Why is he doing that? she thought. If I told him I don’t remember, why bother making a note of it?
‘You really don’t give me much to work with, do you, Poppy?’ Manning stated. ‘I am here to help you, but I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ Poppy replied. ‘I can’t remember everything from back then. She glanced up at her timekeeper on the wall. Nearly time, she thought, not long now.
But this morning he was not satisfied with her stubborn silences. Manning tried to dig a little deeper. ‘The assessment report, Poppy, the one they sent to me from Bronzefield, they said that your anger issues were related to your childhood. Would you say that was where your anger issues first started?’
Poppy sighed and looked back up at the clock. Manning’s inquisition was definitely taking its toll on her today. ‘It could be,’ she said. ‘I don’t really know.’
Manning tried again. ‘Have you ever worked out what the triggers are? The assessment team would have told you that there might be certain triggers that make you lose control of your temper.’
Poppy’s mind drifted off again as Joe began to drone on about the virtues of anger management courses and how everyone can change. She sat in silence, nodding, as if she understood him, but she didn’t. She just hated the idea of other people messing with the thoughts that were inside her head. And now here he goes again, she thought, he is back droning on again about that bloody road to Damascus and the nasty bloke who became Mr bloody ‘Goody Two Shoes’. What the hell has all that nonsense got to do with me?
As her probation officer took her through his idea of her possible road to redemption, Poppy mused over his earlier question. Triggers, she thought, what would he know about triggers? Meghan Masters, now there is a trigger, one big fat nasty bitch of a trigger. Is that what he means?
Poppy was barely sixteen years old when she had met Meghan Masters at the Medway Young Offenders Centre in Gravesend. The magistrates had finally lost their patience with her repeat offending and had decided that six months’ incarceration might teach her right from wrong. Most of her juvenile crime sheet had been reasonably minor offences up to that point – shoplifting, possession of drugs and striking one of her foster carers. But this time she was back in court for a serious assault on a security guard who had grabbed hold of her when he caught her stealing groceries. The fact that she had hit him in the face with a can of baked beans, causing him to lose one of his front teeth, was bad enough, she was due to lose her freedom. Her original sentence of sixteen weeks, however, was increased to six months, when she told the magistrates in no uncertain terms what she really thought of them and their ideas of justice.
Meghan Masters was an enigma, a brutal force of twisted nature. She was a one-girl, walking, talking, fighting army, who ruled the North Wing of Medway by the power of fear. She was followed around by a small group of feral teen girls, purely for the fact that they would rather be her friend than her enemy. Meghan was stocky, some would say chubby, but certainly not to her face. She had a mop of blazing red hair, often held back with a tartan hairband. She was hardly softly spoken and ladylike, you could hear her strong Welsh accent bellowing out from over a hundred yards away when she was angry. She had been in the detention centre for several months, so knew all the ins and outs of the terrain she controlled. She didn’t have many fights there, she didn’t need to. In her early spell of incarceration, she had beaten two girls so badly that her reputation was such that everybody did their best to keep out of her way. One of her victims, an African girl, had dared to look at her in a funny way when she was having a shower. The poor inmate was left with three broken ribs and a bulging eye socket. The girl never returned to North Wing after her brief spell in the local hospital. Neither the victim nor the dozen or so witnesses had reported her to the warders in fear of retaliation, so Meghan’s growing reputation was enhanced.
Poppy did her best to avoid this ogre for the first few weeks at the centre but rumours began to circulate that the fiery Welsh inmate had taken a dislike to her. Their cells were on the same landing of the institution, so it was going to be extremely hard to avoid her for long. Sure enough, one evening, just before dinner was about to be served, Poppy felt a tug on the back of her hair and an oversized hand dragged her into the small corridor where the lockers were. She had finally come face to face with Meghan Masters. The first thing that Poppy noticed was her wild stare. Her eyes were wide, her pupils bulging inside her eye sockets. She looked deranged. Poppy was around the same height as her aggressor but had much less meat on her. ‘You have been bad mouthing me, you bitch,’ Meghan said, a statement, not a question from the red-headed fireball. ‘I need to teach you a fucking lesson.’ Poppy showed no fear. She was somewhat unsettled by the female tyrant, but she stood her ground. Looking behind her menacing aggressor she could see three girls, all part of the regular ‘Masters possee’. One of them seemed to be keeping watch, the other two there as backup for their self-appointed leader. The red-headed dragon began to breathe fire, raising her finger and prodding it into the side of Poppy’s head. ‘Can’t you fucking talk, are you some sort of fucking retard?’ she asked her. Poppy was aware of her predicament, but not scared, she was certainly not going to be intimidated today. So Poppy simply stared back, and for a few seconds the two girls stood toe to toe, eye to eye, like female warriors sizing up their opponent. Suddenly, a call from Meghan’s lookout broke up the altercation. ‘Warders!’ she cried. ‘Warders on the way.’ Meghan stepped back a few inches from her opponent, maybe a small look of surprise in her eyes. This new girl seemed to be braver than most. Rolling around a mass of slimy spit inside her cheek Meghan opened her mouth and released a large ball of phlegm straight into Poppy’s face. Poppy clenched her fist tightly and bit the corner of her lip, but did nothing more, as the shiny spit rolled down the side of her cheek.
‘This ain’t finished, bitch!’ the Welsh girl said. ‘This ain’t fucking over!’ Meghan walked away, laughing with her crew of followers as Poppy wiped her face. She knew that Meghan was right, this was not finished, it was far from finished.
Maybe there was a slight twist of fate that week. When Meghan was forced to spend three days in the segregation unit, it gave Poppy time to think, it gave her time to plan her move. The redhead’s temper had earned her seventy-two hours in isolation because she threw her dinner at a fellow inmate. The argument had more to do with the girl not sharing her tobacco than the Welsh girl’s dislike of the food. During those three days Poppy realised that she was alone. No one would stand by her side if she took on her nemesis. She had more than four months left inside these walls, there would be no way that she would be able to avoid the confrontation for much longer. But Poppy had been in the care system for almost seven years now, she was much harder than she looked. Maybe in a one-on-one fight Meghan would wipe the floor with her, but if that was going to happen it needed to be on her terms. Her mind worked overtime for those three days. Time was running out.
It was a bright morning and most of the inmates were in the outdoor recreation area. Meghan had been out of the segregation unit for almost a week and nothing had happened. She was sitting with a couple of her usual followers when Poppy approached her. ‘What do you want, retard?’ the hard-faced redhead asked.
‘I need to speak to you, in private,’ Poppy said. ‘It is important.’
The Welsh girl laughed at her. ‘Fuck off!’ she said. ‘Fuck off and stare at someone else, you weird bitch.’
Poppy persevered. ‘It’s about a stash. I thought I’d tell you where there is some hidden.’ Meghan lifted herself up off her seat and approached her. The word ‘stash’ had appealed to her. ‘Stash’ was, in simple terms, tobacco. It was currency within those four walls, much more valuable than anything else. ‘I know who is hiding a stash, their boyfriend smuggled it in on visiting day. I know where it is hidden.’